Worthington Industries, Inc. (NYSE:WOR) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call December 21, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Marcus Rogier - Investor Relations

Andy Rose - President and Chief Executive Officer

Joe Hayek - Chief Financial Officer

Geoff Gilmore - Chief Operating Officer

Conference Call Participants

Phil Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Katja Jancic - BMO Capital Markets

John Tumazos - John Tumazos Very Independent Research

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Worthington Industries Second Quarter Fiscal 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be able to listen-only until the question-and-answer session of the call. This conference is being recorded at the request of Worthington Industries. If anyone objects, you may disconnect at this time.

I’d now like to introduce Marcus Rogier, Treasurer and Investor Relations Officer. Mr. Rogier, you may begin.

Marcus Rogier

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone and welcome to Worthington Industries second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. On our call today, we have Andy Rose, Worthington's President and Chief Executive Officer; Joe Hayek, Worthington’s Chief Financial Officer; and Geoff Gilmore, Worthington’s Chief Operating Officer.

Before we get started, I’d like to remind everyone that certain statements made today are forward-looking within the meaning of the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those suggested. We issued our earnings release yesterday after the market close. Please refer to it for more detail on those factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Today’s call is being recorded and a replay will be made available later on our worthingtonindustries.com website.

At this point, I will turn the call over to Joe to kick things off.

Joe Hayek

Thank you, Marcus and good morning everyone. I will go over the consolidated results and provide some additional color on the building products, consumer products and sustainable energy solutions businesses and then Geoff Gilmore will go through Steel’s results. Geoff, as many of you know, is our current Chief Operating Officer and will be the CEO of the Steel business when we complete the planned separation of our businesses.

In Q2, we reported earnings of $0.33 a share versus $2.15 a share in the prior year quarter. There were some unique items that impacted the quarterly results, including the following. We incurred pre-tax expenses of $9 million or $0.14 a share related to the planned separation of our steel processing business, which we expect to complete by early calendar 2024. We will quantify those costs each quarter going forward until the contemplated separation is complete. We also recognized incremental expenses of $0.01 per share related to our recent acquisition of Level5 tools and the earn-out associated with that acquisition. And finally, we benefited by $0.04 a share due to restructuring gains associated with the divestiture of our WSP joint venture’s last remaining steel processing facility. This compared to restructuring gains of $0.03 a share in the prior year quarter.